'A Fallen Devil?' Noble's mind raced.
Not only had her precious Symcus digested a monster without her permission, but the Spell seemed confused about what rank and class the creature was.
Could its power have extended to lying even to the Spell?
Anything was possible. Even the Spell had limits in its knowledge. This Nightmare had shown that more than once now.
Noble shook her head.
'Entwined.' The name seemed to fit, given the duality of the spider that was its host and also the shape of the parasite. Still, Noble felt there was something deeper to the name.
There was no time to study those secrets just now. Too much work still needed to be done.
Noble scowled at her echo. "Don't do that again. You scared me!"
The Symncus snorted. When it came to Noble's safety, he made no promises.
Thankfully, his stunt had paid off in the end. Perhaps he was following some order that she hadn't realized she was giving. Or, like some echoes, the creature had retained some of the personality of the original.
Noble would have to look into the matter more seriously later.
For now... she would need to make sure the rest of the spiders were contained and then deal with Maelys and the Others.
Noble reached for her belt to make sure the cloak and the mirror it covered were still secure.
'No!'
They were both gone!
When had that happened? Noble searched the ground. Had it come off when she was having her unpleasant journey through the living mountain?
It didn't seem so. In fact, the more Noble thought about it, the more sure she was of when it had been taken. The Others had not attacked her, but she had come into contact with plenty of them in her duel with the devil.
One of the mirror beings must have stripped it from her belt.
Turning toward the battle, Noble knew she needed to find the hand mirror immediately. Who knew how many more Others were pouring out of it at this very moment?
With her second sight, Noble scoured the landscape. Thanks in large part to Helie's deadly bow, the horde of Nightmare Creatures had subsided significantly, with only a few stragglers left to be defeated.
The fighting had turned to the Others and the humans, making the battle lines less obvious. Along the beach, Syrce and Maelys continued in their stalemate, obliterating stone and sand in their overpowered clash.
Noble wanted desperately to help her friend, but first, she needed to find the object that could make or break the entire Nightmare.
She found it a moment later.
One of the Others, a man wielding one of the swords from Syrce's armory, was carving his way toward the Saints. While he could have gone around by the edge of the water, he must have preferred to fight the humans instead of taking his chance with the monsters of the deep a second time.
Noble couldn't blame him for that. On the contrary, she wanted to thank him. Not only had he kept the mirror covered, but he had taken the slower route and had not yet reached his goal.
If he had made it to Maelys, the battle would likely already be over.
They still had a chance.
Noble pulled the fleeing man into the air. The Other, whose chiseled features looked like they belonged on the side of a coin and not clutching a woman's looking glass and cape, stared at his feet with wide eyes.
He turned his face toward the floating Master, and his gaze turned cold. Something in him seemed to awaken as his eyes locked with hers. An intense hatred bloomed inside the reflection. Yet the floating Master seemed not to notice.
Noble smiled as she approached. "Nice weather we are having."
"Die!" The Other's monosyllabic cry was punctuated with an inhuman scream.
He swung his blade in the air, stabbing and hacking like a child throwing a tantrum. Seeing his futile effort, Noble couldn't help but chuckle.
He would have better luck trying to hit the shattered moon. Noble lunged to stab him in the belly.
His stolen breastplate was ill-fitting, and the seasoned Dreamscape champion had already found at least three ways to breach it without changing her trajectory.
So he did the only thing he could to escape the lady's grasp. He released his hold on reality.
There was only one problem. While it helped him slip through Noble's levitation, the fading from the physical world did not include the relics he possessed.
Plucking the cape and its cargo from the air, Noble waved at the falling man. "Thank you!"
Turning away, she did not wait to see the man fall. She would have preferred to kill him before he could harm any of the humans, but until Maelys was dead, that prospect was less than ideal.
So instead, she ignored him.
That's when something strange happened. Or rather, the reversal of something.
When she had locked on the Other, he had suddenly become more real. But now that her attention was taken from him, he faded into the background once more.
Maelys never did that, but then again, she never allowed attention to be taken from her for long in the first place.
'Hmm.'
Noble secured the mirror in her belt again. Whatever weird thing was going on with the Others, she needed to make sure they didn't get hold of the looking glass again.
'Did he not know what he had, or was he just unable to use it?' Noble wasn't about to object to the stroke of luck, but something in the reflection simply didn't have the wits or power to drive the relic on his own. That was why he had been bringing it to the Saint.
Noble would complete his quest of bringing the looking glass to the battle by the shore. But not for the reason he was.
In fact, it was the opposite.
He had come to deliver Maelys the victory. With the mirror in hand, the leader from another Realm would be able to bring forth an army that could bury the humans in an endless assault. It would put even the amount of flesh the Entwined summoned to shame.
Noble would not give her that chance. With Roan and Aether holding back the dragon and Helie trying to incapacitate as many of the Others as she could, Noble knew she needed to help turn the tide.
And to do that, she needed to stop the one who was absorbing all the black mist to strengthen herself.
Noble fixed her eyes on the white mass of fur that was ripping apart anything she could get her teeth and paws on.
Maelys looked wild, more wild than even when she had nearly waylaid an entire section of the forest. She had never been human, and in her transcendant form it was easy to believe this was her natural, unbridled state.
The victories of the human soldiers only fueled the power that the Other used to tear at her opponent.
Noble knew one thing—being on the receiving end of those jaws would be no end of trouble.
So she would have to be the one giving Mae trouble instead…